[lesstyzing]

>> Equal protection under the law would be my first pick for constitutional protection of abortion[..] Yet the law can compel a women to carry a fetus to term against her will?

But wouldn't that introduce the issue of whether or not the foetus should be entitled to equal protection (which most anti-abortion voters would suggest is a child and should be protected/have rights)? Seems odd to make it a man/woman equality issue.

[kennywinker]

When two people’s right conflict, who wins?

For example, i have two lungs. You are in a car accident and both your lungs have failed. I could donate a lung and save your life.

Your right to live comes up against my right to control my own body. My right overrules your right. Even if I was the one who caused the accident that damaged your lungs. I can be found to have broken laws causing the accident, but I can’t be forced to donate an organ.

[jsmith45]

My view has always been that it does not even matter if the fetus has full rights.

People do not have the right to physically attach themselves to another person, and leach blood, oxygen, nurturant etc off the other person. Period. Fetuses would not be an exception.

I feel that a person who wakes up with another person surgically attached to them by some sort of mad-scientist doctor could have surgery to have the second person removed, even if this means certain death for the second person. I don't view abortion as any different.

I could support a ban on abortion methods that directly kill the fetus, but as long as the method is primarily about severing the connection to the mother and removing it from the body, I see nothing wrong with that, even if removal means certain death for the fetus.

If people feel fetuses have human rights, I could also support laws or medical ethics requiring doctors to attempt to save the fetus after it is expelled (if the condition was such that saving them might be possible) just like they would try to save any other person.

[charwalker]

So an unborn not yet human will have more rights than an 'illegal alien'?